Old timer plumbing trick to the rescue

Sep 19, 2025 Last reply: 9 months ago 9 Replies

So I needed to "move" and outside tap very slightly - so it was in the same place but projecting about 10-15mm further out from the wall.



It was plumbed with a compression elbow on the end of the pipe coming through the wall, then via a short stub of pipe into the compression inlet on the top of the tap body.



Needless to say it is difficult to extend a pipe by only 15mm! Adding a straight fitting, pipe stub and elbow would be too much. Even using a "street" elbow into the straight fitting was too long. So instead I decided I could turn the 90 degrees using two 45 degree end feed bends in sequence. This resulted in a projection that was actually slightly too longe - but only slightly, and I could cope with this by trimming



10mm or so off the short stub of pipe sticking out of the wall - leaving just enough to still get a fitting on.

Only problem was I could not get this to stop dribbling (no internal isolating valve either!) There was no space for a compression or push fit solution, so it had to be soldered. I even tried sticking a thin tube in the pipe and sucking with the shop vac, but the dribble was too fast to be able to keep it dry long enough.



So I thought I would try the "compressed bread" trick that I had known about intellectually for years, but never actually had to use until now.



I got a slice of some naff white bread, pulled a lump out of the middle of it, and squashed it up into a tight ball of stodge, and rammed it up the pipe with the end of my Biro! Set to it with a mapp gas torch and ready cleaned, prepped and fluxed fittings, and made a good joint with no drama.



When I turned the water back on an opened the tap, I got a splutter of air followed by a short burst of "breaddy" water before it run clean.



Jobs a goodun!



Brilliant! I wish I had known about that dodge fifty ears ago when I needed to cap off an unwanted pipe which wouldn't stop dribbling. I don't believe we had compression fittings back in the 70s, did we? I thought they became available in the 80s. Can somebody fact-check me on this?

Anyway, I just could not stop the water dribbling through the pipe and I couldn't melt the solder in the capillary to make the joint so, I'm ashamed to say, I jammed a cork into the open end of the pipe and plastered over the lot.

Nothing to see, move along now, please. Unless you live in Dawlish, Devon and are puzzled by a building in the town centre that always seems to have a permanently damp wall.

Nick

Yup, compression fittings (i.e. olive squashed into the pipe/fitting by a backnut) have been around for a very long time.

Pushfit came along much later and gained popularity in the 80s

Let's hope they don't turn up the water pressure one day :-)

My approach to plumbing work is to turn off the stopcock and them open the highest mains water tap in the house, (or flush the loo if it is filled from mains water rather than a tank, if it is higher than a tap). Then when I open a pipe or a tap in the lower levels of the house, all the water in the internal plumbing runs out because the open tap upstairs lets air rapidly into the system to allow all the water below it to run out. I just have to remember to turn off the tap upstairs before I turn the stopcock back on.

Having said that, I hadn't heard of the bread block trick so that is another weapon in my armoury.

Did you open all your cold taps in the house and flush the toilets so that the cold supplies could all drain down?

Tim

I did... there are some quite long horizontal runs of pipe though.

It might have eventually dried up, but I was too impatient for that :-)

C1990 I was replacing a radiator and had a joint that I couldn't keep dry for soldering. Eventually I sought help from the plumber who lived across the road, who introduced me to the bread trick.

Why not use copper push-fit? It doesn't need to be dry for that.

On 20 Sep 2025, Tim+ wrote

Sounds like a lot of faff if a plug of bread works...

No way to do it in the space requirements. I wanted to adjust the tap distance from the wall so that the base of it would be roughly level with the finished surface once insulated and clad. So I either needed to make the pipe 10mm longer[1], or as I did in the end use a pair of 45 end feed, and trim the pipe back about 10mm.

[1] it just occurred to me that if I swaged a bit of pipe to form a socket in the end, and then chopped it off 10mm longer, I could probably make a very short pipe extension. (although no swaging tool!)

Join the Discussion

Have something to add? Share your thoughts — no account required.

Didn't find your answer?

Ask the community — no account required